Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

The revolution will be supervised.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

You cannot shame the shameless.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

No one could have predicted…

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / #OWS / Open Thread: Occupy Christmas

Open Thread: Occupy Christmas

by | 45 Comments

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Subvert the Dominant Paradigm… these guys actually got about 30 seconds on the local tv news last night, but the clip’s not online. Jeremy C. Fox, at Boston.com:

Around 20 members of Occupy Boston returned to Dewey Square Park for a holiday-themed protest today, the first day the park reopened to the public following the eviction of protesters by police Dec. 10.
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Arriving at noon, protesters and protest chaplains — a group of clergy and lay people who have brought a spiritual framework to the Occupy movement — donned biblical garb and held up signs with messages such as “There is still no room at the inn” and “Peace on Earth, goodwill to the 99%.”…
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The Rev. Stephanie Spellers, 40, a priest at the Crossing at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, led the group in singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” in the public market. Spellers said she became a protest chaplain because many of her parishioners are young adults and people supportive of the movement.
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She, too, pointed to the similarities between Christ and protesters in the Occupy movement.
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“The point is just to remind people as they celebrate the Christmas season that you can’t celebrate Christmas without acknowledging that Jesus was poor, homeless, disenfranchised and willing to give his life for the many,” she said. “Can we be that generous?”

If all faithful followers of the true national religion of American Consumerism(tm) are granted just this brief annual window to consider the less fortunate, kudos to the Occupiers for making the most of it.

Reader Interactions

45Comments

  3. 3.

    BO_Bill

    The self-generating subdivisions of the OWS movement appear to be smarter than the ACORN crowd, and those rented subdivisions of the OWS movement who complain in exchange for cigarettes. You can determine these things by looking at signage and symbols.

    As an example, the two individuals pictured above do appear to have envisioned their own sign, purchased cardboard and pens with personal funds, and traced it out themselves. The costumes also too appear to be original, showing signs of creativity.

    In this manner, there is some degree of cross-pollination between certain segments of the OWS movement and the TEA Party.

  6. 6.

    Thoughtcrime

    @Roger Moore:

    They’re also working on occupying New Years.

    They should have entered a float at the Rose Parade. They would have many volunteers to build it.

  12. 12.

    Warren Terra

    @BO_Bill:
    Um, BO, you might want to look again. Even leaving aside all of your hobbyhorse and absurd claims (ACORN? “complain in exchange for cigarettes”?), it can clearly be seen in the photograph that contrary to your claims they haven’t “purchased cardboard”. Like most people who aren’t utter morons or working with expense money from a Kochsucking astroturf outfit, they realize that if you want cardboard for a sign you cut it from a box. Which is what they did, as you can see demonstrated by the crease in the cardboard next to the protester’s right hand.

    As to how you’d determine they bought the pens with personal funds, I’d rather not speculate.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T (to the extent that’s possible in an open thread): If anyone lives in the Buffalo area and would like to adopt a very nice grown cat who is unhappy in the new city where her people moved, please email me offline and I’ll tell you more and send a photo.

    SiubhanDuinne (at) gmail (dot) com.

  15. 15.

    Roger Moore

    @Thoughtcrime:

    They should have entered a float at the Rose Parade.

    One does not just enter a float in the Rose Parade. There’s a whole application process, and my intuition tells me that the blue bloods at the Tournament of Roses would not have looked favorably on their application. And that’s if they had applied in time for the 2012 parade, which they couldn’t have because the whole thing gets planned far enough in advance that the Occupy movement didn’t exist yet when the application would have been due. Well, at least the Occupy people should be more interesting that the usual band of crazies who follow the parade every year.

  16. 16.

    Warren Terra

    @BO_Bill:
    I tried to parse this indigestible glop of word salad but recognized the racist and antisemitic tropes floating in it and have wisely if belatedly turned away.

    I hope your family has a lovely holiday, Bill, but you personally are invited to go play in traffic.

    ETA comment apparently made moot and somewhat incomprehensible by a deletion of BO’s comments. I approve of banning this floater, but would have preferred disemvowelling and an explicit statement he was getting booted to a quiet disappearance.

  17. 17.

    beltane

    @BO_Bill: Interesting theory. However, you speak as one who has done several hits of acid too many. Nothing wrong with that of course.

  21. 21.

    Cat Lady

    OWS has been an enormous success, especially here in Boston. The occupiers and the authorities ended up figuring out the eviction without the violence, and I suspect that the overwhelming number of college kids who reside here kept the authorities mindful of the optics – they don’t want to incite them, and to incite lawsuits from all those parents. The organizers are spending the winter cooking up their springtime strategy, so watch this space.

  22. 22.

    Benjamin Franklin

    @BO_Bill:

    Big difference between ‘Occupy’ and Tea Party is that the latter organized their fiscal poutology AFTER the election of the first black Prez. They didn’t seem interested in protesting while Bush was in power. I think that gives OWS a little more credibility.

  23. 23.

    slag

    If all faithful followers of the true national religion of American Consumerism™ are granted just this brief annual window to consider the less fortunate, kudos to the Occupiers for making the most of it.

    Speaking of the CofAC, I finally got around to watching Objectified about a week ago, and I think it’s been making me cranky ever since. The film itself felt ridiculously dated, and almost everyone in it struck me as utterly fatuous. The only heroes of the movie–to my mind–were Rob Walker (who I’d never heard of before), most of the people from IDEO, and some German dude who I later found out was Dieter Rams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBF1rOxWsxg&feature=related). What a tragedy that those whose job it is to be on the leading edge are so absurdly…provincial (for lack of a better word). And the fact that so many people just eat their shit up makes it even harder to know hope.

    Shorter me, I guess: “bah” and “humbug”.

  25. 25.

    jl

    Looks like a BO_Bill comment has been deleted. I read one about Red October, which seemed incomprehensible gibberish to me (but then, a lot of things on this blog go right over my poor little naive head).

    From the responses of those who think they could decipher it, it must have been a doozy.

  27. 27.

    jl

    @Benjamin Franklin: Oh noes, not Latin again.

    BTW, thanks for tip to that Wiki article.

    If they had taught useful stuff like that in HS Latin, I might have stuck with the subject instead of rushing out the classroom in panic, after careful deliberation, deciding on Spanish and German instead.

    Edit: actually, in eeevile multicultural CA, a little Spanish was required, at least at my commie HS in Central Valley. So that was not actually a choice. But now I am very glad I was forced to learn some.

  28. 28.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    There was a really interesting segment on MJ this morning where they had a Catholic Priest, a Rabbi, and an Imam on to discuss the holiday season. It was interesting that both the Catholic Priest and the Rabbi both said that their job was to fight against the muslim hatred that is bubbling up in this country. They basically said that they believed that the Imam would fight as hard for their religions were the shoe on the other foot. The final part of the discussion was asking each of them what they hoped for the New Year. To a man they all said that they hoped that the Country would move towards helping the disadvantaged and poor, and that is exactly what “their God” (and they all acknowledged that they all worshipped the same God) would want. As I said it was really interesting.

  29. 29.

    Benjamin Franklin

    @jl:

    Sorry. It was an impulse. Right after I hit ‘submit’ I looked for the ‘repent’ button.

    Alas…

  30. 30.

    jl

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Nice there was a segment like that. MJ means Morning Joe? If so, was Joe able to keep his cool all they way through? Or did he drop the Kayfabe required for segments like that on networks other than Fox News?

  34. 34.

    Redshift

    @Litlebritdifrnt: That is very cool. As with many other areas of our society, it has been my experience that most of the religious figures who deal with regular people have views that are far more positive and helpful than the ones that generally manage to get on TV or get quoted in the newspapers.

    If conservatives were really concerned about what’s harming religion, instead of accusing the media of being anti-Christian or conducting a War on Christmas, they’d be asking them “why do you keep giving a forum to our idiots who drive people away from religion?”

  36. 36.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Actually Joe was very respectful and if I recall quoted Matthew by stating that Jesus told his followers to “feed the hungry, give homes to the homeless, and clothe the naked” to which all of the holy men agreed.

  40. 40.

    Svensker

    I sympathize with the sign, but the truly Christian way, I think, is to wish for good for 100%. As the somewhat radical pastor at the rich Presbyterian church we used to go to in rich NJ put on the sign on the front lawn, during the height of Iraq War hysteria: — “God Bless the Whole World: No Exceptions”. I liked that guy.

  41. 41.

    Southern Beale

    This has probably already been posted but I thought this was wonderful:

    When an internal city memorandum stated that Occupy Vancouver had cost its city nearly a million dollars in taxpayer money, the organizers did something brilliant: they broke down the cost of what they were doing for the city of Vancouver.
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    According to a recent press release from Occupy Vancouver member Eric Hamilton-Smith: “…over 37,000 meals were served, $672,000 of primary medical care was provided, and 30 people were housed for 37 days at a time when beds at primary shelters were not available.” This assessment puts the overall price tag of benefits to the community at over one million dollars, approximately matching the “cost” attributed to the protests, as well as picking up the tab for services that would have been stuck to the community-at-large.
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    According to a Vancouver Sun article, with the average bed at a shelter costing $83/night, the movement has accounted for over $90,000 in housing services. The Sun notes that with the average soup meal kitchen meal costing $3.50, the 37,000 meals served by Occupy Vancouver accounted for over $129,000 in social services.

  43. 43.

    amk

    @BO_Bill: Not a fan of ows. But a “cross-pollination between certain segments of the OWS movement and the TEA Party” ???

    FU for trying to legitimize an illiterate, racist, mob of traitors.

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